DOT and Citi Bike Celebrate Sixth Avenue Bikeway and #WomenWhoBike

Dozens of people participated in a bike ride today to celebrate Women’s Bike Month and the return of a protected bike lane on Sixth Avenue. Photos: NYC DOT

DOT and Citi Bike marked the return of a protected bike lane to Sixth Avenue today with a ribbon-cutting and celebratory ride. The event also served to highlight Women’s Bike Month and a Motivate campaign to encourage women in NYC to ride bikes.

The new Sixth Avenue bikeway runs from Eighth Street to 33rd Street, the same street where mayor Ed Koch installed a protected bike lane in 1980 before ripping it out a few months later.

“As an enthusiastic Citi Bike rider, I want women to know that Citi Bike is a safe, affordable, and healthy transit option,” said DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg in a statement. “With such a big gender gap among cyclists, we believe that bike-share and over 1,000 miles of bike lanes around the city will be among the keys to getting more women to ride.”

Studies by Hunter College and NYU’s Rudin Center, both from 2014, showed that around 75 percent of Citi Bike users were men, but that women were more likely to ride where streets are made safer for biking, according to a Citi Bike/DOT press release.

Trottenberg was joined this morning by Jay Walder — CEO of Motivate, which operates Citi Bike — as well as Transportation Alternatives Deputy Director Caroline Samponaro, Tri-State Transportation Campaign Executive Director Veronica Vanterpool, Taxi and Limousine Commissioner Meera Joshi and dozens of others to inaugurate the lane and promote a month-long slate of events intended to get more women on bikes.

“Our research finds that twice as many women are riding in protected bike lanes on redesigned streets like Manhattan’s Eighth and Ninth avenues, compared to the unprotected lanes we see on streets like Fifth Avenue,” said Samponaro. “With a continued investment in Citi Bike and protected bike lanes, we will see the number of women riding continue to grow, which is a great thing for the city’s transportation network.”

Can anyone help find photos of the Ed Koch protected bike lanes? Or even anecdotes from those who were around to ride them? I’ve never been able to find much myself but have been curious about the specifics of the design.

The city needs to plan/present an entire citywide protected bicycle lane network, approve it, and implement it in one shot. Until we get a network that takes people places, with low stress, the entire way; we won’t have a more diverse bicycling community.

And what’s up with the new texture in the recently painted (or repainted) bike lanes. Feels more grippy I think.

the new texture in recently painted green bike lanes is to prevent fading and extending the life of the markings, is what i hear.

SnowEcho

agree that the disjointed network won’t encourage a more diverse bicycling community – one of the biggest issues the moms in WE Bike’s moms on wheels group say about the bicycle network is lack of continuity – it often leaving riders high and dry while they are mid-route. so not ideal. imagine walking to your destination, coming to the end of a sidewalk and having to navigate cars zooming down a huge corridor. it’s frustrating and stressful – and completely unnecessary.

SnowEcho

yeah protected intersections is really the next step after protected bike lanes. large intersections with no medians or any other raised barrier – and with too-short count-down clocks that only work for an able-bodied adult, completely ignoring kids and seniors – currently do nothing to protect the vulnerable transiting them. again, stressful and potentially dangerous – and for what?

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